Local campaign revs engine on ‘Buy Local’ theme

I first worked as a journalist for the Cut Bank Pioneer Press, and my first hard-hitting assignment was covering the community’s sidewalk sales event. Sidewalk sales were – still are – one of the simple promotional devices small-town merchants used to capture what retail dollars they could before folks packed up for, say, Great Falls and a splurge at the JCPenney or Herberger’s.

Despite the best efforts of the Cut Bank Café, couples would drive 100 miles for a meal. I recall one run to Lethbridge in the midst of a brutal winter just for a feast of good Chinese food. If a lawyer friend had not known the border guard at Del Bonita – the gate came down at 9 p.m. – we might have spent a longer night in Alberta than we intended.

But I got the message about buying local.

Not too long after I arrived in Cut Bank, I sold my 1972 Pinto for $600 and bought a 1976 Subaru for $1,600 in Great Falls. (Goodbye firebomb.) A few days later, the Press’ publisher quietly called me aside and said a Cut Bank dealer had taken some exception to my out-of-town car-shopping.

He could have sold me that car.

Greater Spokane Inc. is trying to make the same point with Popsicle green shopping bags emblazoned “BUY LOCAL,” and the message “Keep Your Neighbors Working” below.

The logo appearing in advertisements and store windows has become the spearhead of a GSI campaign to remind area shoppers how important their dollars are to area economies, said coordinator Dawn Picken. Internet merchants and Seattle malls do not employ the workers, pay taxes or support charities the way local businesses do, she said.

A dollar spent in the community will recirculate many times. A dollar exported is gone.

Picken said Buy Local is not intended to be Spokane-centric. GSI has invited Inland Northwest chambers of commerce in to explain how they can use the campaign on behalf of their members. That should not compromise Spokane’s traditional role as the Inland Northwest’s regional trade center, she said.

Nor is Buy Local anti-big-box stores, as are many similar programs, Picken said. If they’re here, they count.

She said members began to press for such an effort last November as a poor Christmas season loomed. Getting a coordinated campaign going on short notice was out of the question, she said, but GSI made a soft launch in February thanks to the Magner Sanborn-designed logo. Merchants are starting to credit the program with new sales, she said.

Others, like Contract Resource Group, Kershaw’s and Angus Meats, are integrating Buy Local into their sales materials.

But beyond anecdotes, quantifying the benefits of buy-local efforts can be difficult, Picken said, adding, “We don’t want something that just feels good.”

Although buy-local campaigns have been assessed many times, most have looked only at how effective they are defending local merchant sales against big-box retailers. Others, like Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, germinated around the concept of environmental sustainability and the benefits of buying locally grown or made products that enhance not just the economy, but sense of place.

“It’s about what does it mean to be local?” said that group’s co-founder and Executive Director Michelle Long.

That’s a good question. GSI has interpreted “local” about as broadly as possible. But if one neighbor is working at Barnes & Noble, another at Auntie’s Bookstore, maybe it’s all the same as long as it’s not Amazon.com.

Depends on your own sense of place, perhaps, and what’s appropriate.

Like that old Subaru. OK car, but no match for a Cut Bank winter.